dartagnan wrote:This is why I've said repeatedly (on this board) evolution does not deal explain abiogenesis.
Nothing explains abiogenesis because it has not been shown to exist. It is one of those things taken on blind faith within the scientific community. It is one of those doctrines of materialism.
Actually is there any dispute that life originated at some point? The research is looking into how precisely this occurred. Nothing on faith there?
I didn't say this necessarily convinced others (there are plenty of theists that believing in evolution), yet, it explains, for me, why we are the way we are. Also, I just don't believe God would make so many damn mistakes.
Then your argument is based on the rejecton of particular type of God.
No, I don't dismiss God outright, yet, have not been given any evidence there is a God. I am saying if I was a theist and believed that God began life and let it run on its merry way making everything perfectly (this is talked about ad naseum - how perfect nature is) that this is not a convincing argument, for me.
We are not perfect, so, why would a creator allow evolution to run amok and allow us to be in the present state with faulty eye sight, faulty tickers, etc... -- where we are not perfectly adapted to our environment?
Again, yours is a theological argument dealing with particulars. But it doesn't negate the evidence that a supreme intelligence exists.
You asked me specifically what arguments theists have made, to me, and I was telling them to you. I have not said it negates God. I am telling you my observations of the world negate their arguments.
I would imagine it's because we are just enough of what we are to survive. Maybe others believe in a God that didn't care what happened after he breathed a little life into a speck and let it go on it's merry way, yet, I can't fathom why any creator wouldn't take an interest in its creation.
You're making the same mistake as other religious people by assuming God must be interested and involved in or daily lives. What if he isn't? Why must be be involved in order to exist? That's a strange excuse to prefer atheism.
Again, you asked me what arguments theists have made. I told you. Sorry if you don't like them. Take them up with them. I do not choose atheism! I am an atheist because I don't believe in God - not that I've discounted that he exists, yet, I do doubt it. I can't just choose to believe.
Okay, you are starting with the god made us loving.
No I'm not. I'm saying "scientific" theories don't explain why there is altruism. I can't help but notice that much of your response here is verbatim, what Richard Dawkins has been arguing. Alister McGrath took him to the woodshed for many of these arguments, because he showed that hardly any of it is really science based. So calling it "scientific" is really misleading.
I am not arguing as a devotee of Dawkins. I talked about mirror neurons earlier -- this explains a lot of how and why we are empathetic creatures. Children with autism have a deficit in their mirror neurons - this is important in understanding how important these neurons are in social interactions. When we see another human being we can relate to them -- we can sense how they feel by interacting with them. When we see someone hurt we can recognize it and may even cringe. When we see joy we can become joyful. We are social and understanding how we relate to one another (and don't wish to see others hurt because we recognize their condition) explains a lot of our tendencies to tend to one another.
I look at behaviors that enhanced our ability to survive therefore continued in subsequent generation.
Which is why the theory doesn't work. Being altrusitic doesn't do anything to guarantee survival.
It's not about guarantee of survival. It's about what has slowly occurred through many, many, many generations biologically and culturally where we learned how to navigate with others.
You can also look at human behavior that doesn't seem to advance the idea of God such as the need to teach the parable of the good samaritan
So people can be good or bad, this doesn't do anything to undermine the idea of God.
I didn't say it did.
If you look to families who are those in the family given the most physical attention and nourishment? Offspring and those in the immediate family. The farther you move away in familial ties the less resources are put into those relations. Why? Well, why would we see a stranger as less deserving of resources as a child of our own? Could it be that we have no vested interest in their genes being passed on?
This is so idiotic, and know you're just relaying Dawkins. But think about it. Why look at humans as mindless animals who are subconsciously interested in producing more offspring when sociological/psychological data already explain why the above anecdotes are as they are?
I have only read one book by Dawkins and it was The Selfish Gene. I've read some things he's written on the net. I read mostly just scientific this and thatin books and what I come across on the net and the only one of the four horsemen I routinely read is Dennett. I think humans are animals, yet, we're most definitely not mindless. Understanding why something is helps me contemplate the oughts. Just because something is natural does not make it "right" in my view, yet, I still want to understand the "is".
I have friends I have known for more than twenty years. But I can describe my relations with various friends the same way familial ties come and go, increase and decrease. It has nothing to do with a subconscious desire to pass on genes and everything to do with proximity. You're naturally going to be closer to those you're around the most. Ths is basic sociological dat that has been known for centuries, and yet Dawkins seems confused about it and asserts the need to view it in terms of universal darwinism.
I think clan mentality is alive and well and this is obvious when you see nutters that go to football games and riot. People chanting and burning effigies in the streets. Wars. Etc... We do gravitate into groups and we more often than not tend to those in our own groups. This is just something so obvious I'm stunned someone couldn't see it.
My step-father is a classic example representing the antithesis of Dawkins crazy theory. When he married my mother I was 12. He had been married previously to two different women, having children with each of them. I was 15 before I realized he had 6 children that were actually his. Yet he had hardly any relationship with any of them. Even now, he still has more to do with me and my siblings, because we live in the same city. He spends outrageous amounts of money on my neice, even though he is not really her grandfather. He has kids all over the country who will be passing on his genes, but he is more interested in "nourishing" kids who aren't even his. Why? Becuse he is around them more so a relationship is built.
I'm not talking about your particular circumstance or mine. I'm talking about the big picture.
The farther away you get from your own clan, culture, whatever the less most people see the "other" as a human being deserving of anything, at all. Why? God made it that way?
Well, it sure as hell has nothing to do with a subconscious desire to pass on one's genes! This is not a scientific theory and it doesn' even begin to make sense. I can understand people supposing possibilities as these among animals, but with humans? We humans communicate with one another, and finding out why people choose to be with some people and not others, is as simple as asking them. You can't ask a monkey why he is so interested in screwing anything that moves.
Well, we actually learned about mirror neurons from monkeys (monkey see monkey do neurons) and we are animals, yet, we have the ability to discuss why we are the way we are and to learn about it. I am not saying each and every action we take is because we want our genes to pass on.
Think about it. Why do men have visectamies? Why do so many coples have no interest in procreating. Why do atheistic societies have fewer children? This "passing the genes" theory simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I doesn't even make it past the first round of questions.
Oh, sheesh. You are missing my point. You asked me what arguments theists made. I said that altruism and love is pointed to as not being possible without God. Altruism is perfectly possible without God when we understand that we are social creatures and we relate to one another through empathy, chemical bonding (oxytocin), relations, etc...
Theists, all the time, point to their own feeling of God as proof of God.
Of course, that is the only way they can describe their perception of him, but it isn't proof to anyone except the recipient.
What are you arguing again? You are arguing against me and these are not my arguments!
I thought that you believed morality was passed down from God. That's often stated.
No, but it is obvious that or modern codes of morality are based on religious principles.
Well, you see, I think man created religious codes. Not God.
I am talking about cultures where there were many gods/goddesses that later lost these beliefs for one supreme deity. Of course some cultures there still are remnants of polytheism.
Dawkins is wrong on this point too.
Why are you arguing against Dawkins and not me? I have studied anthropology and world civ like anyone else that goes to college and everything I learned stated that most early cultures had many gods/goddesses that were responsible for natural occurrences. I didn't think this was in anyway, at all, even disputed.
I am pretty content with the belief I've had since junior high psychology class that the brain is the organ responsible for behaviors and processing.
And it is, but the question is about preceptions of the divine. If such perceptions were possible, then we'd expect them to be processed in the same way our brain processes sound waves as it enters out ears. Specific areas of the brain will light up too, but what came first, the brain lighting up or the horn honking? Obviously the horn, so it cannot be argued that the brain produced these sounds anymore than it can be said the brain produces "God feelings." Watching neurons fire in the brain doesn't answer anything really anymore than it tells us where sound or smell comes from. This is really just a smoke and mirror argument by atheists who like to point out "scientific" experiments and illicitly leap to unscientific conclusions.
Some theists believe that God created us with an ability to sense him and point to neurotheology as proof of this.
I said that if people are undergoing a certain experience that they label a god experience and we can observe a certain portion of their brain light up that this certainly points to something
Sure, but it only points to the area of the brain that processes that experience. It doesn't tel us wuether that experience is received or self-induced. It doesn't prove the brain is responsible for producing it, anymore than the brain is responsible for producing what we smell, hear or see.
I didn't say it did. I am saying this happens. Some theists point to this and say it helps their pov and atheists do the same.
I've actually had an out of body experience. A dissociative, derealization state is a normal reaction to a human being going through a traumatic event. It's a mechanism that helps us to survive. It's all explained by science and it makes perfect sense, to me.
Science doesn't explain it and the experience doesn't help us survive. How in the hell does it help us survive? Survive what?
When people go through a traumatic experience they have a flight or fight response or they can freeze which is essentially the bodies way of shutting down. This is so common, and well known, I can't believe this is in dispute.
Are you comfortable believing that taking a baseball bat to the side of a head doesn't really damage anything?
What the F---?
Where did I say that?
You said you'd be you if half your brain was removed. Well, smooch in part of your brain and you think you'd still be you? I doubt it.